


I Can’t Have You, But I Have Dreams

by kayura_sanada



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst with a Hopeful Ending, Deus Ex Magic, M/M, Post-Dragon Age: Inquisition - Trespasser DLC, The Fade, What-If
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-21
Updated: 2019-08-21
Packaged: 2020-09-23 06:53:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,796
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20335918
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kayura_sanada/pseuds/kayura_sanada
Summary: There was no point in ruminating on what might have been. That, however, did not stop Solas.Fills the "Bedside Vigil" slot of my Bad Things Happen Bingo.





	I Can’t Have You, But I Have Dreams

**Author's Note:**

> Title comes from Brandi Carlile’s “Dreams.”

The powers he’d received from Mythal were a double-edged sword, not the least because they had come at the cost of a dear friend. Yet another he’d found himself killing in his search for restitution. There would be more. Far too many more.

One power he’d achieved was brought through his own abilities with the Fade and the horrible consequences of the _vir’abelasan_. Knowing he could, he found, had been the greatest temptation to him _doing_. He’d slept within the Fade for months, speaking with spirits of wisdom and caution and forethought, each warning him of the pain it would induce, of how it might make him waver. He knew the risks. He knew the price. He also knew, as he had known from the start, that he would do it.

He let himself slip into sleep one night months after last saying goodbye to Kios. Once he reached the realm of dreams, he manipulated Mythal’s geas and the Beyond and lay back to study the hazy ideas of what the future might have been.

At first, the images that came were multitudinous, to the point where Solas struggled to parse out anything that remained solid within the murky depths of the Beyond’s reach. It was as he chose his own, idealistic path that he began to see things.

Here, in this false place, he had chosen to wait before enacting his plans. Here, he chooses to stay with Kios first. It starts the same – he goes to his knees beside his broken orb. Kios apologizes, the weight of another lost piece of elven past in his voice, in the grit of his teeth. But instead of telling Kios it was real and leaving, he goes to Kios’ side and offers his own body as a shield from the harsh light of the sun as it glinted off the snowy mountains. Kios gives him a small smile in gratitude.

And here, as everyone celebrates and Kios retreats to his room, Solas follows after him. Kios does not stand alone, but instead leans back into Solas’ arms. “Peace for the humans,” Kios says, and snorts lightly.

“Peace for everyone, at least for now.” Solas’ grip tightens. “There is more I must tell you.”

Kios chuckles. “Now? You want to tell me of how you helped Corypheus _now?”_

Solas nearly lost his concentration on the magic he was weaving. He tightened his grip. He would have to start all over again if he lost this. He wanted to see more.

Inside the false world he’d created, the him holding Kios stiffens. After a moment, he says, “you knew.”

The snort then is insulting. “No. I’m a fool.”

Solas is silent for a long moment before speaking again. “You never said anything.”

“Neither did you.”

Solas hitched in a breath. This moment was one that he had missed. In which Kios mentioned his fears and concerns, mentioned his knowledge of Solas’ continued silence. He wished, suddenly, that he had stayed. A single day longer, and he would have known.

Solas’ hands slide from Kios’ waist. He takes a step back. Kios’ hands clench on the balcony before him. “If I was going to run you through for it, I would have done so already.”

Solas pauses, because that was very true. But he doesn’t return to Kios’ side. He instead considers leaving, after all. Kios, after a moment, stiffens. Because he is no fool, and he must know what Solas’ hesitation means. Solas tries to explain, suddenly, not wanting his last sight of Kios to be this back, braced to accept the blow Solas is about to give. “I had no intention of helping Corypheus. I never would have guessed that he could harness the orb’s power. When he did… I had to make it right.”

Kios’ back did not relax. Solas realized what Kios recognized and flinched, even as he continued to watch. Within, the him standing behind that back realizes the same. “I am sorry, _ma vhenan_.”

“I don’t need any apologies for that.” Kios turns to him. Those bright eyes, pink from his own blood, glare into Solas’. “You helped me kill him. You did not return to him, and that was, I’d told myself, my greatest fear. But you’re still pulling away, even after his death. Which means your secrets go far deeper than this.”

Solas says nothing. Kios wraps his hands around himself, trying to look strong but instead looking vulnerable and alone. “So why did you want him to use the orb?”

Nothing.

“What were trying to retrieve, Solas?”

Solas sucks in a breath. He has to hold it or risk wrapping his hands around Kios’ face and taking those lips with his. Kios is beautiful when his mind explodes like that, when he shows the depths of his knowledge and deduction. He knows Solas holds secrets, knows Solas holds knowledge of the old world, and knows Solas mourns that which the elves once had. So he deduces that Solas intended to reclaim something the elves have lost, and like a gauntlet, the knowledge is thrown before him. Even now, Kios was gauging his reaction. Learning.

The longer Solas remains silent, the more lines gently folded out from the edges of Kios’ eyes and lips. The man stood as sharp as a knife’s edge, his stiffness so vulnerable it looked brittle.

Here, countless options stretched out before Solas, turning the image hazy again. In the safety of the Fade, Solas allowed himself to be selfish and stupid. He let himself tell Kios everything he told him only when Kios’ life had been in danger. His false self tells Kios of his past, his name. Kios’ eyebrows lift. His eyes widen. But he does not reject Solas’ words or try to refute his claims. He listens as Solas tells him of the Evanuris, of his attempt to stop them. He tells Kios what it cost the elves. He tells Kios what he plans to do. And then, at the end, he tells Kios, “but I fear doing so, at least for now, because of what I will lose.”

Kios takes it all in with nothing but silence, silence and those crossed arms and those piercing eyes, until finally he looks away, toward the side, leaving Solas a view of the left side of Kios' head, bereft of the side from which his blond hair hung in long folds. Kios runs a hand through the side that is buzzed nearly to his skull. “You cannot stop on my account,” is what Kios says.

Solas closed his eyes and searched the realm he lay in for demons. When he found none, he opened them again in wonder.

Kios still stands there, unable to met Solas’ gaze. His lips are thin, stretching the scar on the upper lip into stark relief. “There are countless problems with your plan, of course,” Kios says then. “You would be undoing the very thing that made you harm us in the first place.” Solas winces; Kios does not prevaricate. He never had. “If you fear the loss of elven lives, then you’re only doing this for the few like yourself and Abelas who remain, not for elves.” Kios’ lips thin still more. “Unless you do not consider us elves anymore, anymore than Abelas does, in which case I fail to understand why you would ever pretend to love me.”

Solas flinches again, because that was precisely how he had felt before coming to know Kios, and it was precisely why his plans had never factored in the results on the Dalish or alienage elves. “I have a plan for the Evanuris.”

“But not for us,” Kios finishes, and closes his eyes. He takes a deep breath. “Why tell me now? Why tell me at all?”

Solas honestly had no answer, but the Solas within, the one who had made this decision, did. “Because I want to stay with you, but if I stayed with you under false pretenses, it would be crueler than if I had left.”

Kios nods. More silence, until Solas fears he has given too much away. He begins planning his escape when Kios finally speaks again. “Thank you. For telling me the truth. I take it this is what you meant to tell me in Crestwood.” He doesn’t wait for an answer, even as Solas takes the words on the chin again. He hadn’t been subtle in Crestwood, and he’d ended up using a deeply personal piece of information to divert Kios’ attention. Of course, he’d failed. “If you want to wait, then that works in our favor, as well.” Solas’ brows furrowed. “Start telling me everything,” Kios says, his gaze hard. “We’ll start searching for a solution that doesn’t involve all of our deaths.”

Almost, Solas pulled away entirely, unable to stomach watching more. Kios accepted his explanation, just like that. Kios shot down Solas’ plan, even as he allowed Solas to continue on the expectation that he would continue attempting its completion.

Solas watched years pass, just like this. The two years that included the Qunari’s attempted invasion showed Solas meeting with Mythal, as he had, and beginning his own spy network, as he had. Yet along the way, he and Kios maintained contact, either through written correspondence or, more often, through speaking together in the Fade. The moment Kios’ condition worsened, Solas held his hand and, within the bright green of the Fade, told him what was happening. Kios had chuckled humorlessly. “Yet another physical aberration,” he says, only to have Solas’ hands wrap around his own.

“Never an aberration,” Solas says, his gaze intent on Kios’, in a way he has learned not many ever bothered to do before. “An anomaly, perhaps.”

Kios rolled those gorgeous eyes of his and turned his head away, but Solas still caught the smile. “Right.”

Solas had still needed to take Kios’ hand, in the end. Arriving sooner had meant saving more of his arm, but little else. He’d managed, at least, to stop the level of pain Kios had been in by the time he’d arrived before Solas in the reality he knew. They met only a short month later to deal with the Qunari, reuniting with a hug and a kiss, and with none of the agony that had been in their reunion all those months ago.

Kios had been injured badly, thanks to the loss of his hand earlier, but he had equipped a wrist guard with its own blade, and had used it with his still functional hand to wield his daggers as usual, his magic still branching out to create illusions to trick his opponent. Kios asked for updates, which Solas had readily supplied. Kios had given his own, though there had been little; Kios was done searching through options in the nations he’d already searched and was ready to head into Tevinter, perhaps even Par Vollen, to find potential clues to help Solas erase the Veil without eradicating life on the planet.

“There is no way to prevent it,” Solas says, as he has over and over again the past two years. “The Veil has worn thin the bond between our world and the Beyond. Returning them to their places beside one another will tax the natures of both. Humans will contend with the return of drastic, sudden changes, altered by mages and spirits alike. Your immutable world will cascade.”

“Yes, yes,” Kios says, waving off Solas’ words. As always. “Countless will have bodies unable to handle the Beyond; non-mages in particular will suffer its effects. Mages will struggle to ascertain reality. Many will go mad. More will fall to demons, blood magic, a frenzy of undiluted mana. Including me.”

Solas’ lips thin. It was not a sight he could stomach. Hence why he had chosen to tell Kios, and to remain at his side. Kios was mortal. Solas could live a full lifetime with him and have time to spare. He had been wise enough to lie about how long his plans would need to be; those under his employ believed it would be their next generation who would see the fruits of their labor, due to no more than necessity. And still, countless had signed up. The elves wanted their pasts back, even if it would not be accessible to them. Even if they did not live to see it.

Kios, too, has refused any argument that perhaps he would prefer Solas not return Arlathan. Kios, like most elves Solas has met, keenly felt the loss of his culture. Over the past two years, Kios has inundated Solas with the regrets and pain of the Dalish, the fear of becoming wraiths to their own pasts, to the realities of their people. Kios was grateful for the knowledge of the vallaslin and the Evanuris, just as he was grateful to learn the instigation of the Exalted March upon his people. “Whatever the truth,” Kios said once, “it is better than knowing nothing but the lies of the humans.”

If Solas could, he would have given Kios Arlathan. He would have given Kios most anything. But the return of Arlathan could mean Kios’ death. It was far more likely that, no matter what Solas did, Kios would never see the return of his peoples’ lost past.

So he shared what he could. As the years passed and Kios traveled to Tevinter, then Nevarra, then Antiva, Solas showed him the wonders of their old home, the spiraling staircases that wound through the oldest _vallasdahlen_, branching off to follow the winding streams of the makeshift rivers as they flowed through the air to splash playfully among the temple columns that housed the Evanuris’ slaves. Beautiful, even as the slaves worked to shape another column into the titillating pose of a nubile elven woman, her gaze on the grand statue of Elgar’nan. He showed Kios the spirits and the libraries, the knowledge that had been part and parcel to their immortal existence, if one was lucky enough to have the freedom to look.

“You hadn’t been owned?” Kios had asked once, only for Solas’ lips to thin. “Ah,” Kios had said, and had turned away. Solas knew Kios could guess who had owned him, and why Solas had begged Kios not to ask him to take on the _vir’abelasan_. Kios was no fool.

He showed Kios what it was like to feel a hand running through his hair that was not his own, what the warmth of a body along his back as he slept felt, and how much a person could feel wanted and loved. They both eschewed most sexual affection, and they relied solely on platonic touch and soft kisses, meant more for affirmation than as a prelude to anything more. And as he showed Kios all these things, the lines around Kios’ eyes and lips sank further. His skin grew less smooth to the touch. His fingers slowly became gnarled.

Solas had protected Kios through the Qunari invasion, had stopped assassins from reaching the ex-Inquisitor, and had helped subdue the Titans before they could wake and shake the worlds apart before Solas could give them the environment they needed to live in peace. But he could not stop the meandering pulse of time.

After over a decade, Kios had helped Solas find a way to ensure the continued entrapment of the Evanuris. The design was so elegant, Solas found himself, in the wake of the dream, taking notes. If they could not be killed or defeated, then limiting their power was what was essential. Thanks to the knowledge of the _vir’abelasan_, Kios had found a way to _divvy up_, for lack of a better term, the power they wielded. “Like the Grey Wardens,” Kios says, and his smile is one of triumph.

Amongst those born to his followers, Solas was given permission to hand such power to their offspring via blood magic. Their souls would await the moment when they could meet the Evanuris, and then, as if a magnet had met its counterpart, a bit of the Evanuris’ power would be stripped from them. If these children were with him when he eradicated the Veil – and while some might choose to leave, plenty would stay behind – then the Evanuris would be torn apart before they could so much as raise their staffs.

A decade. To Solas, it had always seemed like little more than a passage of days. But watching Kios slowly wake to pops and groans, arching his back and rolling his neck, he found each day like a curse. The idea of meeting with his people seemed more and more like a waste, until finally Kios rolls his eyes and says, “I’m going with you, you immortal dumbass.”

He had, and it had been amazing. The elves had been leery of Kios’ sudden arrival, but Solas’ closest advisors had always been aware of Kios’ involvement in his life – and were also aware of it being the reason for the delay, which made them unhappy. The solution Kios had given to one of their problems, however, had helped pave the way. With that had come acceptance from Solas’ people, who quickly spread the word that the elven Inquisitor was still working for the betterment of elves, just as he had when Corypheus had attacked.

Another decade passes, Solas’ closest becoming antsy. The lines are permanently etched onto Kios’ face now, markings like a new vallaslin. Solas traces them every day, every morning, every night as Kios sleeps. Sometimes Kios wakes up during the ritual. Every time he does, he grabs Solas’ hand with fingers more gnarled by the day. “I’m close to finding that other way, _ma fen_,” he says, and then, “in a thousand years, when you find someone new, you will be able to be with them in a world unmarred by genocide.”

Solas hates those words, and yet, so long as he hears them, then Kios is not yet lost.

Kios is, of course, as good as his word. Solas’ spell, the one that had originally created the Veil, could be taken down, just as Solas had always known. What Solas had never thought to try, and what Kios had studied for over two decades, was whether it could be done in increments, and in a way that was inexorable.

It had been Kios’ knowledge of the orb, and his knowledge of the rifts, that had eventually paved the way to Kios’ solution. It took, however, another fifteen years for it to see even the barest of fruition. By then, Kios was struggling to walk the steps to Solas’ tower in the far mountains, and he spent many days in bed, his health waning. Solas gave him every possible amenity, had his people work around the clock to give Kios the medicine and healing he needed. Still, Solas could see the days turn worse, and worse, until finally, Kios no longer left the bedroom, and finally, no longer the bed.

Solas sits beside Kios after almost forty years of being together, his gaze caught on Kios’ bright pink gaze as if seeing it for the first time. Those once bright eyes were clouded a bit, milky, but the intelligence behind them had never waned. “I haven’t reached the perfect solution, _ma fen,”_ Kios rasps, breaking the silence as it stretches taut between them. Sitting beside Kios for the fourth day in a row, Solas no longer has the strength to pretend it is just another day. “But I have found most of it. Come with me to the Fade, and I will show you.”

Solas does. Within, Kios is just as young as he’s always been, his body as lively as it had been when Solas had met him less than half a century ago. So very little time. Elves have so little time, thanks to the Veil. Solas wants more. He would always want more. “Show me,” Solas says, because it is what Kios wants. And Kios does. Less than two days later, Kios dies.

Solas opened his eyes on a gasp, waking so suddenly he felt like his bones had jolted in their places, only to shiver back into position. For a moment, the real world looked just as hazy as the one he’d stepped into, until he realized the haze was caused by his tears. He turned in his bed, closing his eyes to the world and burying his face in his pillow.

Looking at it from this moment, he did not know what he had expected. In truth, he’d never thought to find a timeline in which he and Kios had shared a life together. He had only wished to see if… if it could have been possible.

Yet, when faced with the success of it, when shown it _had_ been, he had not used the common sense necessary to back away while he still could. Instead he had lived forty years in a single night, watched Kios age to the point where he could recognize Kios at any age. He knew Kios’ softest smiles, ones he had never been given in this lifetime. Ones he had never earned, because he had never told Kios the truth.

He finally sat up, his hands moving to cover his face as he struggled to control his breaths. He now had forty years of Kios’ plans in his hands. Kios had been so close to coming up with a final solution. One that would absolve Solas of all the meaningless deaths he faced now. Certainly, there would be some no matter what – the humans, especially their chantry and their anti-mage rhetoric – would fall before the return of the Fade and its denizens, would wish to strike out against the natural world as it returned to them. Countries would topple as elves came back into power and humans faced the consequences of harming them for too long. Dwarves would suffer from the waking of the Titans. There would be unknown effects due to the darkspawn, a situation that should never have arisen, and never would have, if the Veil had never been and the Evanuris had never called out to the magisters.

Each breath came with a stutter, but finally, his emotions calmed. With what Kios had created in that world, Solas could likely finish in a few years. He could give Kios what he would have wanted, lessen the blood price, do what was right, as far as he could without giving up his obligations.

He rolled off his bed and stood. Perhaps he should look into getting in touch with Kios again. Perhaps, if he groveled enough, he just might be given a second chance.

He’d had one lifetime with Kios. He wanted more.


End file.
